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Making Room For Science
Interesting things are happening at Philly Hackathons. Increasingly, participants at local events are opting to work on what would best be described as “citizen science” projects – projects not focused on the development of an app as a final product, but where an app or device constructed at the event is the means to a… Continue reading
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Building a Government Data Culture
“‘Are people innately altruistic?’ is the wrong kind of question to ask. People are people, and they respond to incentives.” – Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner (SuperFreakonomics) One of the most important things an open data directive can accomplish – whether it takes the form an informal policy, an executive order or an open data… Continue reading
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One More Week, Three More Things
My time as the City of Philadelphia’s Chief Data Officer is coming to an end. It’s been an incredible experience – I’ve had the pleasure of working with a great team, and to have helped change the way that government officials think about open data and civic hacking. Before I move on to new things,… Continue reading
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The Philadelphia Experiment
Three years ago next month, the City of Philadelphia’s open data portal was launched by local technology firm Azavea as part of the inaugural Philly Tech Week. Two years ago next month, Philadelphia joined the small (but growing) fraternity of cities to adopt a formal open data policy – a milestone that stands as one… Continue reading
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APIs : To Charge or Not to Charge
There’s a discussion starting on the U.S. Government API Google Group on the subject of charging for the use of government APIs. This is an interesting discussion (one that governments should pay attention to as they develop their API strategies) and is a nice follow up to my last post on sustainable civic technology. Clearly… Continue reading
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On Sustainable Civic Technology
Sustaining civic technology will mean that both government’s IT infrastructure and the civic technology sector that builds on it will need to change. A pair of recent blog posts caught my eye and highlighted this theme in my head, and motivated me to capture a few thoughts on this topic. The first post was by… Continue reading
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The Problem with Public Data
Governments make a wealth of data available on their public websites. Forward thinking governments have take steps to ensure that more and more of this information is available in open formats. But the majority of the data available on government websites – even those with formal open data policies, like Philadelphia – is not open.… Continue reading
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5 Minute REST API
Inspired by one of Waldo Jaquith’s recent projects to create an easy solution for converting data into a REST API, I wanted to try doing the same thing with a bit of a different approach. Below is a quick screencast demonstrating how to take a CSV file and convert it into a powerful, flexible REST… Continue reading
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Don’t Hang Any Pictures
A few lessons learned and insights gained serving as a municipal Chief Data Officer – I hope this will be of value to anyone interested in starting an open data program. Helping to create an open data culture in government is a process, not an outcome. It takes time. Though it may sometimes seem easier… Continue reading
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Turning Government Web Content Into APIs.
Inspired by a recent Open City project that repurposes data on sewage in the Chicago River, I wanted to work through a quick example of turing a web page that houses useful information on water quality in Philly into an API. Here is a quick screencast showing how easy it is to take information rendered… Continue reading
About Me
I am the former Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia. I also served as Director of Government Relations at Code for America, and as Director of the State of Delaware’s Government Information Center. For about six years, I served in the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), and helped pioneer their work with state and local governments. I also led platform evangelism efforts for TTS’ cloud platform, which supports over 30 critical federal agency systems.
Civic Innovations 